“I just want him to tell me why he did it,” says Elliott. “What is the creative side of this? What’s the point? It shows no creativity.”

Elliott says he hasn’t heard from Houston’s mother, Cissy Houston, but that he did try to warn his own mother, Dionne Warwick, saying, “She had no idea. I’m sure she knows about it now, though.”

He says he wants an apology from West, as well as a promise to switch out the album’s artwork with something else. Elliott is prepared for what he will say to West if the rapper calls him, however.

“What were you thinking? Did you think this through? And if you did, why did you do this?” says Elliot. “Because you’re hurting people. It knocked the wind out of me last night. When someone passes, you try to mourn and move on and remember the good times.”

“Why are you going to pay $85,000 to bring something to the forefront?” he asks.

Pusha T, 41, appeared on The Angie Martinez Show on Wednesday to promote his album, which debuted Friday and revealed West had called him with last-minute changes to the cover’s artwork.

“One a.m., my phone rings. No caller ID. [He says,] ‘Hey, yeah, I think we should change the artwork. And I like this other artwork. And this other artwork is 85 grand,’” he recalled.

“I said, ‘Hey, I don’t want to pay for that and I wasn’t even going to ask you to pay for that. We picked what we picked, it’s here, it’s ready,’” he continued, adding West told him, “‘No, this is what people need to see to go along with this music. Imma pay for that.’ I say, ‘You my man! You my man!’”

It is understood West paid to license the photograph but it is not clear if he paid the Enquirer or Houston’s sister-in-law Tina Brown, sister of the singer’s ex-husband Bobby.